My husband and I almost never eat at restaurants. Cooking is a joy for me, a hobby, a passion and even decoration! My kitchen is a blend of Tuscan Garden and Old World Pub. Using good spices in your cooking opens up a limitless world of flavor. The best part about spices; you are adding nutritional benefit, metabolism boosters, and antioxidants to your food without adding calories! Sauces are loaded with fat, sugar, salt and horrible preservatives. Why would you add all these things to your diet, feeding them to yourself and your family? They are unnecessary and the money you spend on one jar or can of sauce, which you know is a single shot thing, you could spend the same and try a new spice that will last a long time, making tons of meals. I collect spices like some people collect decor or antiques(I have at least four different kinds of paprika alone), I use them to decorate my kitchen. Buying or making beautiful jars for storing your spices not only keeps them fresher and keeps them from degrading in flavor and quality, it also adds a flare to your kitchen, making it come alive! Inspiration when cooking is best born when you can see your spices, the colors call to you, yellows, reds, browns, greens; they are absolutely beautiful! Loving to make my own chips,whether potato or tortilla, have inspired me to make two of my own spice blends that we really enjoy. We make our own bloodymarys from scratch with our spices, fresh cracked black pepper, celery salt, garlic. A tip I can give is to always keep spare empty glass spice jars to make large amounts when you create a spice blend you really like. A neat cheap way to keep your spices straight if you can't tell my smell or appearance what they are is to take a permanent marker and either stencil or free hand a beautiful label or just write it on the bottom of the jar where no one can see it. Spices are amazing! Use them to unleash your inner cook, we all have one all we have to do is give that inner cook the tools he or she needs to flourish! Good luck and if you have any questions or need some help, recommendations feel free to comment!
